An Italian man has been crushed to death under thousands of vast wheels of a parmesan-style hard cheese, which weigh about 40kg each, firefighters have said.

Giacomo Chiapparini, 74, was buried under the cheeses when a shelf broke in his warehouse in the northern Lombardy region on Sunday, creating a domino effect which brought down thousands of wheels, the firefighter Antonio Dusi told AFP on Monday.

Rescuers “had to move the cheeses and the shelves by hand”, Dusi said, adding that it “took about 12 hours” to finally find Chiapparini.

The warehouse, located in the small town of Romano di Lombardia near Bergamo, contained 25,000 wheels of grana padano, a hard cheese that resembles parmesan and is very popular in Italy.

Chiapparini had been checking on the ripening wheels, which were stored on metal shelves, the highest of which stood at 10 metres (33ft).

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